Poems

May Day? Mayday!

66 Comments

For those who decided last week that the long slushy slog of winter 2012-2013 was finally over, a cold slap is in the forecast for today. Rain and/or snow and a high barely in the ’40’s make me glad I decided to leave the snowblower gassed up for another few weeks.

Just in case.

Meanwhile, America’s Singsong Poet Laureate, Schuyler Tyler Wyler, climbed into his drafty garret to produce this May Day Ditty.

Embrace the May, but be a cynic.
Mother Nature’s schizophrenic.

She brings us air so sweet and mild,
and then a freezing zephyr wild.

She’ll green some grass, hey nonny nonny,
then kick your ass a little, honey.

Drape floral garlands ’round your feet,
then fill your face with freezing sleet.

Get out and do your May Pole dance,
but put some hot sauce in your pants.

Though May bringst bees and buds to flower
Conditions changeth by the hour.

When has a sudden change caught you unaware?

66 thoughts on “May Day? Mayday!”

  1. Good morning. I seem to live in a world where nothing changes very fast. That’s kind of boring. I did get some unexpected news recently regarding the Honda CRV that I drive.

    I have a very good mechanic who always tells it like it is. I asked him to fix my air conditioner and also check out a noise under the vehicle. He took a look and said that a lot of expensive repair will be needed before long on the under side because some important parts were not in good shape. Therefore, he thought I should not invest in repairing the air conditioner because that would be very expensive and it better would to sell the car with out repairing the air conditioner.

    He said the parts under the CRV would probably hold up a little longer so It didn’t need to get rid of the CRV right away. That was shocking news. The CRV is 11 years old with about 100,000 miles on it, but I thought a Honda would hold together longer than that.

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    1. My ability to edit out the errors in my writing seems to be lacking this morning. That’s no big surprise.

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      1. The CRV was bought as a used car. It has been a good vehicle, but I have heard of another one that had the air conditioner go bad and it costs $1000.00 dollars or more to fix. Somehow, the suspension and other parts under the car have suffered from excessive rusting.

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    This one caught me unawares, and I still feel dumb about it.

    Years and years ago I was struggling in life. I was so busy with a full time job and a 3 year child. In a quiet moment I FINALLY realized what I should have realized 10 years before when I got married–I CAN’T STAND THIS GUY WHO IS MY HUSBAND. WHY DID I MARRY HIM? He was a nice guy and quite entertaining, but not what I wanted in a husband. I was not going to pull out of my depression until he was gone.

    Well, duh. And the rest is history.

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    1. Yes, I had one of those moments too, Jacque. It makes you feel so stupid, but at least we both got out the heck out of there…

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    2. You have a lot of company, Jacque. So many wasbands and werewives out there. I haven’t met that many women who took as long as I did to percolate this awareness, then do something about it. For me, it was turning 60 and asking myself, “Is this really how you want to spend the rest of what remains of your life?” Divorcing so late in life takes a certain kind of courage because it’s highly likely that there will not be another life partner. My only regret is not having done this at least a decade earlier, though.

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  3. Did anyone else on the Trail deliver May Baskets with candy to the doors of friends? Do people still do this. Such a nice pagan ritual in the middle of Iowa, it was indeed.

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    1. I didn’t today – but I did as a kid in South Minneapolis. I remember making little paper baskets and filling them with candy or paper flowers and leaving them for some of the neighbors. There was an older lady down the block – Mrs. Graves – who left a small candy bowl out on her enclosed front porch, knowing the neighbor kids would come by and raid it. I remember leaving little baskets with paper flowers for her with my friends a few times as a way to say thank you for all the candy.

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    3. I used to deliver May Baskets as a child, as stealthily as possible, so that I wouldn’t be caught and kissed by the recipients. Son exhanged May Baskets with a female childhood playmate until they were both seniors in high school. They never dated, but always appreciated each other.

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    4. I do… usually. I have to admit that it got away from me this year. A couple of years back, Teenager and I decided to put them out the night before, since we have several early risers on our block. At a couple of houses, we had to sneak around, keeping under windows so we wouldn’t be seen — it was a little thrilling and a little stressful.

      Some years we make cones w/ construction paper… last year I used those plastic containers that powdered drink mixes come in. We put pretty paper and ribbon all over them and punched holes in the top for handles. A lot of fun… it’s making me think I should maybe make some for Mother’s Day!

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    5. I remember the May Basket tradition as something that was done when I was in grade school. I don’t remember much about what I did. I think I might have been given a few May Baskets to deliver to a neighbor or two.

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      1. Me too, although I wasn’t introduced to this tradition until about 15 years ago, when a sweet little neighbor girl started hanging May baskets on selected neighbors’ doors. Haven’t gotten one the last couple of years, guess she’s too old now.

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  4. Sudden change always catches me by surprise
    I tend to keep putting one foot in front of the other then out of the blue the new reality hits and I now put one foot in front of the other with new understanding. I hate it when that happens but what are you going to do

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  5. Realizing one night at midnight that I didn’t want to get a Masters degree in theater design. Especially not if it meant moving to Illinois and living in a double-wide trailer with a group of smokers. Oh, and trying to live on $500 a month (my graduate stipend) while I was doing it. And then when I was done trying to find one of the precious few jobs at a college so I could teach – and repeating the move process a few times until I found a spot with tenure. Ugh. No. I like designing sets and building stuff – but realizing that I was not *that* committed to the art, well, that was a surprise. It had been my dream for several years. Reality smashing into that dream was eye opening to say the least.

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  6. Morning all. Like Jacque, the implosion of my marriage took the wind right out of me. The realization that I didn’t want to live the rest of my life in that relationship was hard but the surprise of seeing that no, it wasn’t a forever love was devastating to me.

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  7. Jacque was surprised to learn her marriage was over when she was the one leaving. I was probably much more surprised when my wife of 31 years announced–entirely out of the blue–that there would not be a 32nd year. A moment like that becomes the largest watershed event in your life: everything that happened to you was either before or after that event, and you realize that what you took for granted in life is gone forever.

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  8. I have been thinking about this question this morning, and I realize that my life has been relatively change free. My grandparents all lived to be very old, and no other close relatives died until they were old, and no one in my family every divorced or made big changes in their lives, so I never experienced sudden change. My parents are still alive in their 90’s. I have been married for almost 30 years. Is big change bad and inevitable? Should I be worried? Most changes in my life have been for the good-having children, finishing grad school, getting licensed to practice psychology independently. I wonder what life will be like once my parents are gone. I wonder what is in store for my kids. I think you just have to roll with what gets thrown at you. My life, to this point, has been a slow-pitch softball game.

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    1. Renee, you ask a good question: “Is big change bad and inevitable?” I think it is inevitable for most of us. The good or bad issue is complicated. One of the most common experiences in life is finding out that the worst thing that ever happened to you turns out to be a blessing in disguise. It doesn’t “always” go that way, but experiencing a change that comes as a total shock is potentially life-sustaining because it makes you think about your life and maybe you are forced to come up with a creative response.

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      1. I have experienced the “blessing in disguise” several times. Wasband, Child’s school of choice, job I didn’t get (that was phased out within a year), to name a few. All these things turned out for the best, even if I was not happy at the time of the change.

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        1. Sometime, vs, I ponder the differences between happy and unhappy people. One of my convictions is that a hallmark of most happy people is that they are able to make constructive uses of adversity. By that, I don’t mean to make light of adversity. Bad events hurt. It isn’t always possible to rise above a nasty blow and seize something positive from it. But it is wonderful and soul-sustaining when you can.

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  9. Completely OT… I just discovered that Bachman’s on Lyndale is doing a free seminar tomorrow night on straw bale gardening with Joel Karsten, who has written a book and done seminars all over Minnesota. 7-8:30 in the Heritage Room. I’m going to go, since you never know what you might learn!

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  10. Morning–

    The biggest sudden change for me would be when our daughter was born with special needs. Although in hindsight, Kelly says there were certain things during the pregnancy that caused her to suspect something. The baby wasn’t as active as the first baby, plus at one point baby had turned in the womb and in the process of scheduling a hospital visit to do a ‘version’ (is that the right word for turning the baby in utero?) and the doc flipped her right around there in his office.
    But for them to tell us, ‘We think she has Downs Syndrome’…… wow.
    The best analogy we heard was to think of it as a train trip. You plan on going to Berlin. You study Berlin, you read up on all the wonderful things to see and do in Berlin, and you get on the train to Berlin— and when you get off you’re in Amsterdam. What?? I didn’t want to go to Amsterdam! I didn’t read up on Amsterdam! But Amsterdam is still a wonderful place… it’s just, different.
    And it has been an amazing trip. Different, but still amazing.

    Other sudden changes would be the concerts I have here. I can set up lighting and make pretty colors and nice looks and the conductor walks out as the concert starts and kicks his podium 4 feet to the left. Well heck; there goes that lighting effect.
    When I first started doing lighting here that would drive me absolutely bonkers. Now I just sigh (and I mutter to myself) and turn on a different light. Because the audience doesn’t know.

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  11. The biggest surprise for me was when I found out that my lover and musical partner was seeing someone else. All those plans I thought we had – I learned suddenly that it was just me. That beautiful harmony we were making? He didn’t care about it. All that passion? He didn’t share it. Surprise, surprise!

    The other surprise I had in my work life was that the Minnesota DNR is not filled with environmentalists. They care – to a point – but they are very specialized people and, while conservation and environmental protection are important, they aren’t a priority. My rose-colored glasses saw something that really wasn’t there… again.

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  12. The week before our son Joel died, one of us said something like, “Hmm, you know, we’ve never had a traumatic loss of real close to us…” At this point (5 + years down this road), I can say that if you want it to, life goes on. It’s like Ben said – my analogy is that a switch was thrown on our train track that headed us in a completely different direction. I still don’t know all the ways it will change me, but I don’t dwell in it anymore.

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  13. I once went rollerblading in Lilydale Park without looking at a weather forecast first. I was way out in the wildlife refuge area near the Black Dog plant when storm clouds rolled over and the wind came up. Got drenched. It was a little chilly, but mostly it was the wind that unnerved me – that feeling that you could be picked up and transported to Oz in an instant.

    I was happy to arrive home that day.

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  14. Losing a child; finding out your baby is special needs; suddenly realizing that you don’t want the degree being pursued; having a life partner leave; and so many more jarring changes among this group of humans. Hopefully, the only surprise for me for quite a while is seeing it snow on May Day? The biggest shock to my system was having a doctor call me at home with the news that I had a deadly form of cancer. Second and prior to this was having the only man with whom I’d ever been in love suddenly announce that he still loved his former girlfriend and was going to try to “make it work” this time. This was about six years ago. Three years ago, after getting the diagnosis, I allowed him to return after he campaigned to be the one who’d walk along side me through the ordeal. In reality, I had no other offers and was in such a vulnerable state that I didn’t have an ounce of “No way” in me. He was with me for the month leading up to my life-altering nine hour surgery, then on the night before I left for Mayo, he once again told me that he still loved her and just couldn’t do this. My kids and friends were furious at this last-minute abandonment, but I was so overwhelmed by the sheer physical trauma of the surgery and its aftermath that there wasn’t anything left for emotional suffering. In a sense, this saved me.

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      1. After he left me six years ago, they stayed together for over two years. They’d split up “for good” a few months prior to him seeking redemption (or maybe a free place to live) the second time he came around. They’d had a tumultuous 22-year relationship which, I came to believe, probably involved him seeking the company of other women several times over. I just happened to be next in line, I guess.

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  15. On a lighter note, there was a sudden transformation in Husband when I finally got brave and suggested that I, for one, wanted to be more than friends. (We were housemates at the time.) Took him a couple of minutes while he closed his eyes to process this (these were really L O N G minutes, or maybe it was half a minute, who knows?), and then he gave me this really long hug and said “You’ll be held a lot.”

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  16. The US Geological Survey has doubled the estimate for recoverable oil in the ND oil patch to as much as 11,000,000,000 barrels. Life has changed around here and this new estimate suggests that is going to keep changing.

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      1. Pretty mixed. It feels good to see people have jobs. It makes me angry to see the housing shortages and exhorbitant rents, which then leads to problems hiring needed workers at my social service agency, as wages for State Employees are too low for newcomers to survive the high costs. I don’t like being short staffed at work. I don’t like all the new traffic. I don’t like the influx of panhandlers. I like the increased ethnic and social diversity, but don’t like to hear people gripe and complain and express rumours and fears especially about the Mexican-American workers who have flooded into town. I don’t like me or my daughter being ogled by oilworkers (including the Mexican-American ones) in Walmart. I like seeing new restaurants. I don’t like hearing locals gripe about all the changes. They were the ones griping about the lack of opportunity and jobs before the boom. I like all the new buildings going up, including a new city animal shelter, since the one we have now is old and horrible and ready to be condemed. I am unhappy that we don’t have a homeless shelter, (the City has no intention of funding one), but happy that local churches are providing shelter for the time being. I like the fact that if we sold our house now, we would get 4 times what we paid for it, but I don’t llike the fact that my property taxes will go up because the city assessor just increased its value by $40,000 over last year’s assessment. Yes, it’s pretty mixed.

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        1. I can imagine that it’s very difficult living in a boom town. Essentially, the world as you knew is changing so rapidly that there really isn’t a sane way to adjust to it, and there is no such thing as not being affected by it. I hope that in the years ahead the positive changes outweigh the negative ones.

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  17. A shocking change for me is the fairly sudden loss of good bread selections at the super market where I shop. This not a big tragedy. It is significant for me. I could always get Katherine Clark sturdy whole wheat bread in the past. Now it is gone and all of the other bread selections are the spongy and soft kind. Even the whole wheat ones are very soft and seem to be mostly air and water. We frequently bake our own bread so I only need store bread when we haven’t found time to do our own baking. Never the less, I think the super market should carry at least a limited selection of bread that has some substance and doesn’t resemble Wonder Bread.

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    1. Perhaps your bread choices will change with the move to the CIties. We try to get to Breadsmith in Fargo whenever we are there. It is wonderful bread. I usually bake once a week as our bread choices aren’t good, either. I was happy that I had found a substitute for Swany White flour, but now I hear that the mill we had discovered in Harvey, ND was just declared insolvent! I hope they can get up and milling their organic flour again.

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      1. Yes, I think we have bought some good bread at a Breadsmith store in the Twin cities and, like you Rennee, we buy bread from good bakeries to bring home she we visit the Cities.

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  18. The weather was about the only topic that anyone at work wanted to talk about today. Hopefully weather will improve so the conversations can get a little more variety the next couple of days!!!

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  19. Sudden changes…the one that first comes to my mind was when I discovered that someone I thought I knew fairly well turned out to be a person totally different than what I perceived (over many years). But he didn’t change – just my perception did. It threw me for quite a loop because his actions just did not fit who I thought he was – it just boggled my mind. I couldn’t make sense of it.

    Having lived in Minnesota my entire life, I am sure that there have been some sudden weather changes that caught me by surprise, but I’m having trouble remembering anything specific. I do remember walking home one day when it was raining lightly…and then the deluge came, along with a stiff wind that made my umbrella totally useless (because it was inside out and the rain was coming sideways). I had about 3/4 of a mile to go. Saying I got WET was a total understatement.

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